


Rat's Feet

by EudociaCovert



Series: Death's Other Kingdom [6]
Category: The Hollow (Cartoon)
Genre: Exposition, Gen, Plot, Worldbuilding, and feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 20:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15056882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EudociaCovert/pseuds/EudociaCovert
Summary: Adam meets with the Weird Guy, and ends up giving up more information than he gets.





	Rat's Feet

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments, they keep me inspired! Thanks to everyone who's reading! I hope you enjoy!

Back when they had just finished assessments and been assigned to careers Adam hadn’t been too happy about his results. He had felt lesser for being picked out to enter the police troops while Kai and Mira were both designated for brainy jobs. Over the last six years his perspective had changed. He wasn’t exempt from the L.E.A.R.N. program of course, but while Mira and Kai were spending nearly every waking moment paralyzed in a chair as information was pumped into them until their brains were ready to burst Adam’s specialty cared about physical prowess. While some fitness could be obtained with vitamin injections and electric stimulation of muscle groups, they couldn’t get around old fashion calisthenics. And that meant running.

Morning and evening runs were Adam’s guilty pleasure. A pleasure because jogging in formation with only two robotic sentries keeping track as his class looped around the city was the freest an academy student could really get without breaking rules. Full of guilt because he got to leave the stifling white walled dorms and windowless classrooms twice a day, and still took Kai’s reward trips to the city to take care of the shadier side of Hollow games. The other two hadn’t been off campus for anything other than Hollow games in months.

One day they’d be free, completely, and Adam would take Kai and Mira to see all the things he’d seen alone and ached to show to them. That was a world he desperately wanted to live in.

The evening run wasn’t when Adam preferred taking care of Hollow business, but it was doable. The sentries were more concerned with making sure no one was skipping runs than if they all got back. It wasn’t like most Students were inclined to run for it, and if they did they wouldn’t get far. They were basically Academy property until the Wipe. There was nowhere to go.

The tunnel was coming up.

“Hey,” he greets the person jogging beside him as the first row of students disappeared into shadow. “I’m going to take a shortcut. Cover for me?”

“Shortcut,” his classmate scoffs. “Everyone knows you’re off to pick flowers for your engineers. Yeah sure, I don’t care.”

This is another thing Adam appreciates about his designated career path; the team-oriented field is a bit lighter on toxic competitiveness, and sore and tired classmates are a lot more likely to turn a blind eye to rule breaking. They were all united in pain and pettiness.

“I’ll own you one,” Adam says as the tunnel swallows them, and in the half second it takes for the following automation’s night vision to switch on Adam has ducked out of formation and plastered himself to the wall. The procession passes him without fanfare. He waits until the sound of their footsteps has faded to a dream of sound, and then he begins walking back the other way.

He has to go see a Weird Guy about a glitch.

\--

 “A little too supervillainy for my taste, but I’ll let it pass.” L.E.’s voice lilts when he talks. He’s less intimidating when he’s not purple, but Adam firmly believes anyone who’s ominously said _you’ll never make it_ to a group of lost kids is automatically more supervillainy than the bridge walkway he chose for a meeting place.

“You’ve only got thirteen minutes.”

“I can see why.” L.E. looks him up and down, taking in the mass issued sweats, school logo printed boldly on the left of Adam’s chest. “Academy Student, huh? Not what I was expecting! How did you manage to get out here? Wait no, what I want to know is how you manage to play _the Hollow_?!”

“I’m here about the glitch.”

L.E. pouts. “No fun at all.” From a jacket pocket he pull a thumb drive, holding it up with a raised elbow and a crooked grin. “I’ve got a copy of the corrupted game right here. Maybe your squeaky friend will be able to make heads or tails of it.”

Kai could, he’s great at that stuff. Adam definitely can’t leave without that drive. He raises his own eyebrow and tries to play it cool. “You didn’t contact me about a game copy, you contacted me about an identity.”

“Ah ah ah,” L.E. shakes his finger at him, unnervingly playful. “I don’t share vital information when I’m curious. Now tell me. Why are three Academy students playing The Hollow?”

“Are you kidding me?” Adam grits out through his teeth, blood hot and ticking in his neck. “I’m not here to play games with you.”

“Boo, I like games.” L.E. holds his arm out over the rail, thumb drive on the palm of his hand. The sound of the river rushing beneath them seems suddenly magnified. “Still don’t want to play? If you don’t answer you won’t get a name _or_ the game programming. You’re choice!”

“You’re overestimating how much I care.”

L.E. ‘s hand dips a few inches and Adam lurches forward before he can stop it. He cringes and L.E. laughs.

Adam just lost the game.

“We need the prize money.”

“For what? If you make it through the Academy you’re set for life. You’ll have any job in your field, the best reputation, and money out your kazoo in only a couple years. Why risk all of that by playing the Hollow?”

Adam hates this, hates explaining this to anyone, especially to a stranger. “You do know it’s not a good place, right? The classes are beyond brutal, the ranking system’s dehumanizing, everything you do and say from the friends you make to what you eat at lunch to what you said to your parents on a video chat is recorded and factored into your grade, your rewards, your ranking. Every other day someone’s breaking down from the pressure and it’s treated like a failure when they do.”

L.E. twists his head to the left, reptile like. “But, that’s what the Wipe is for.”

Adam clenches his fists.

“Oh, oho! That’s what this is all about, somehow. The Wipe.”

“If we raise enough we can bribe our way out of it.”

L.E.’s eyes pop wide behind his sunglasses. “Aren’t you a bundle of mysteries. You want to _avoid the Wipe? Why!?_ The academy’s one saving grace is that you don’t remember any of the terrible parts afterwards, gobs of information stuck in your brain, no recollection of how it got there.”

“There are things we can’t forget.”

“Like what, each other?” L.E. gasps at Adam’s expression, right on the verge of mocking. “That’s it, isn’t it, you don’t want to forget your widdle fwiends? Don’t want to return to your old life without your school pals?”

Adam snaps.

“There _is_ no old life! The Wipe isn’t just used at the Academy, _dumbass_ , it’s used when crimes are committed too, to lessen negative mental effects on victims or erase criminal compulsions from perpetrators. I’m already at the Academy in my first memory, confused and injured and angry and _with Mira and Kai_. If they take away our Academy memories, we lose _everything._ ”

Adam’s breathing hard. His hands are shaking.

L.E. isn’t smiling anymore. “Way to make it depressing,” he says, and throws the flash drive in Adam’s direction.

He catches it. It’s a bit bulkier than he noticed before, encased in a thick plastic case. He puts it in his pant pocket.

He doesn’t see the kick coming.

Adam blocks on instinct, arms up to guard his face, but the second kick comes before he can regain his footing, and he’s over the railing before he realizes he’s in a fight.

He catches the edge of the bridge with one hand, shoulder and back retching from the contortion and abrupt halt. He gropes upward with his free hand, but L.E., kneeling on the walkway, pressing something into his open palm and pushing it away, sending him swinging.

“Sorry kid, I gotta save my own hide. If it helps, I’m rooting for you.”

The Weird Guy pulls his fingers off the ledge, one by one.

Adam falls.


End file.
